The Pilot That Did The Unthinkable | The Lokomotiv Yaroslavl Plane Crash

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This is the story of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl disaster. On the 7th of september 2011, a yak 42 operated by the charter company yak service was operating flight 9633, from Tunoshna airport in yaroslav to minsk in belarus. They were ferrying some very important passengers, the Lokomotiv yaroslavl ice hockey team. They were part of the KHL and they were very popular in Russia at the time and in the world of hockey. They were superstars in their own right.

That day the weather was good with light winds and tons of visibility. The yak 42 entered the runway and lined up with the centerline all ready to go. The runway was 9800 feet long, more than enough for the yak 42s takeoff run, if things went to plan they'd just need 3900 feet of runway. The pilots were satisfied and advanced the throttles to takeoff power. The plane began rolling down the runway, gaining speed with every second. It was hurtling down the runway at about 130 knots, but the plane did not lift off something bound it to the earth.

But the plane was running out of space, the runway soon came to an end and the plane still wasn't airborne. It traveled past the end of the runway on the ground for another 1300 feet and it finally lifted off. The plane struggled to stay airborne, swaying precariously from side to side. It couldn't climb but it was off the ground. But luck soon ran out for flight 9633. In the planes flight path was an antenna, the plane at this point was only 20 feet off of the ground and it could not clear the antenna, the left wing clipped the antenna and the plane came crashing back down. The plane broke up during the impact. The tail section of the plane ended up in the volga river, the rest of the plane was strewn down the extended centerline of the runway.

Of the 45 people on board only one person survived. No one from the hockey team survived.

Right after the crash a ton of attention was put on the carrier, yak service. It wasnt the best airline out there. For example in 2009 the airline was investigated by the european commission for safety concerns, even russian authorities imposed sanctions on the airline. Moreover the airline was forbidden from flying into europe in 2010 for a few months. This airline was not in good shape.

The investigators had a mountain of documents to go through and they had some stories to tell, they found that the training given to the crew was sub standard. The training that were done were marred with brakes and holdups, it wasnt a continuous training program.

That was not all these pilots were trained on both the yak 40 and the yak 42, and they flew both planes. The yak 40 and the 42 arent that different, the Yak 42 is just a newer more modern version of the yak 40, but there were enough differences that pilots needed additional training to fly the yak 42. Usually pilots are trained to fly one and only one type of aircraft. If they want to fly another type of plane even from the same family theyd have to undergo simulator training and tests so that theyd understand the new plane really well. Here they went back and forth between both planes all the time. On this plane the first officer was the more experienced pilot, he infact held a high position in the company but he only had a few hundred hours in the yak 42 and that's why he was in the first officers position.